The City of Watertown’s effort to prevent a tax hike for residential property owners, which could be as high as 18%, cleared a major hurdle when it was approved the the House of Representatives on Beacon Hill.
On July 8, the House unanimously approved the bill called “An Act relative to property tax classifications in the city of Watertown for fiscal year 2027 and subsequent fiscal years.” The legislation must still be approved by the Senate and signed by the governor.
The special legislation submitted by the City of Watertown, known as a Home Rule Petition, requests that Watertown be allowed to shift more of the property tax burden from residential properties to commercial properties. The shift would allow a 50/50 split, instead of the current requirements of state law to have 61 percent of the tax levy coming from residential properties. The current split is based on the ratio of residential to commercial property tax value when the legislation was passed in the 1980s.
If the Home Rule petition is not approved, the average taxpayer could pay 18% or $1,300 more next year than the current year, State Rep. Steve Owens told the Joint Committee on Revenue at a hearing at the State House in January.
City Council President Mark Sideris announced the approval at the July 14 City Council Meeting, which was attended by State Reps. John Lawn and Owens.
“I want to announce and thank both of our state representatives who last week got our Home Rule petition passed unanimously by the House of Representatives,” Sideris said. “It’s already in the hands of the Senate, and they’re working diligently to get it done.”
City Manager George Proakis said he is glad that the House passed the Home Rule Petition this month, and can now be considered by the Senate.
“I’ve had conversations with Senator (Will) Brownsberger. He’s working very hard on this for us. He feels optimistic about where it’s going from here,” Proakis said. “I always feared that we were going to be doing this in November, so I’m really happy that we are making steps towards progress here in July.”
The situation that Watertown faces rarely arises in Massachusetts, Lawn said, and is the result of the City’s recent growth in commercial developments.
“It’s a very unusual tax issue that the state has not really dealt with before,” Lawn said. “But it’s really a testament to the Council who’s done incredible work of working with developers over the last 15, 20 years. We’ve seen a really incredible thing happen here in town, where our commercial rates have gone above our residential. … So it’s a great thing for the City to get this passed, and we’ve got a couple more steps that should happen soon.”
Originally filed as Bill H.4687, a new identically worded draft was submitted on July 8 as Bill H.5569, according to the State Legislature’s website.
Owens and Lawn attended the July 14 meeting to present City officials with a copy of the Declaration of Independence. The document was a replica of the one that was printed in Salem by Ezekiel Russell in 1776 and distributed to all the cities and towns in Massachusetts 250 years ago, Owens said.
“It was printed, this particular version, as a gift from Revolution 250,” Owens said. “They cranked out 351 of these on a period-appropriate printing press in the Haverhill Museum of Printing.”
Lawn noted that the effort was spearheaded by State Rep. Sean Garballey of Arlington.